Collisions in Infinite Night
by Mischa1
Summary: When seconds step out of the clutches of time, consequences rise and meteors fall.


Collisions In Infinite Night  
by Mischa  
mischablue@iprimus.com.au  
  
Rating: PG-13  
Keywords: VA, DSR, MSR. Angst a-plenty. Scully POV.  
Spoilers: To be safe, entire eighth season up to and including   
'Existence'. Significantly, 'Within/Without', and the DeadAlive arc.  
Summary: Post-'Existence' -- When seconds step out of the clutches   
of time, consequences rise and meteors fall.  
Disclaimers: These characters are not mine, they are the property of Chris Carter, 1013, etc.  
  
Feedback is welcome.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
You were always a puzzle to me from the very beginning,  
Agent Doggett. This mysterious man who had looked down from  
the ladder reaching into the stars, staring down a truth you  
would never comprehend. You arrived at a time when I was  
cast out of my own orbit, lost in the night, not knowing  
what there was left to believe. Time was no longer time  
anymore, the seconds had sped and it was another person who  
met you in that cold foyer, another Dana Scully who listened  
to your theories and threw water in your face. I carried in  
my shadow memory, the weight of knowledge, and when you drew  
near radiating arrogance and blind assumption, it was that  
darkness that took over and refused to release me from its  
grasp. I was falling from the realm of the stars and I  
resented how you bore witness to that.  
  
Those very first moments I thought I'd worked you out, knew  
who you were, what you were, by your profile and your  
attitude and your deception. I looked at you and saw you to  
be simple, straightforward, and an enemy in what most see as  
a game but what I call my life. Practical and solid, but  
there was something else there I never afforded myself the  
opportunity to investigate. An intensity that lined your  
face and hardened your jaw. Threads of pain and  
determination weaved into the fibres that made up who you  
were.  
  
In the first few tentative months I looked at you, believing  
I was looking a man worthy of comparison to Mulder.  
Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking that maybe you were  
better, noble in your own way, a depth of unexplored  
territory that would never be right for me to uncover. It  
seemed right to me, somehow, that you were another Earth, a  
planet with ocean and land, sea blue and grey around sand  
and rock and strength. Mulder wasn't earth or sea but the  
trees and the skies above them. That cliche, never see the  
forest for the trees? Mulder was the trees. I never knew the  
whole, as much as I wanted to, as much as I tried. Mulder  
was a green planet, giving away little clue to the lifeblood  
that sustained him long after the mystery of a missing  
satellite was solved. So much life in you both, only the  
ecosystem which kept you alive was far more clear to me.  
  
I wanted to be merely a passing meteor to you, only  
temporary, never forever. You pulled at me, and I pulled  
back, equal and opposite forces sending us into a tentative  
back-and-forth dance. You repelled me and then drew me in, I  
forced you away and watched you come back. We drew lines and  
stayed respectfully behind them, knowing our places. I've  
called you 'Agent Doggett' so many times for so long now  
that it became second nature to me, and I'm sure that to you  
it was the same. That boundary has been so carefully  
respected it's almost as if it's been set in stone, raised  
on a pedestal.  
  
I don't know when it started, the moment you first willingly  
drew close. Maybe that card was the first sign. A moment  
that didn't seem to belong in the usual progression of time.  
You were meant to leave, to never look back, to meander up  
your ladder to where greater expectations lay... and yet  
there you were, slipping a useless piece of delicately  
coloured card into my hand carefully, tentatively, pushing  
at physical resistance. I remember the awkwardness in your  
manner when you told me you would be falling into step with  
my solar system, my tiny corner of the universe... you were  
knocked out of a galaxy of rising stars and established  
planetary networks to be shoved into the fringe, the  
anomalous, peculiar occurrence tucked away at the very edges  
of the fray.  
  
I can be fair. At the very least, you tried to be  
open-minded, cautiously expanding your horizons, resisting  
the bizarre but attempting to understand. What was it you  
asked me, in those first few days? Don't turn your back on  
me, I'm asking you a legitimate question. I hear those words  
in my head spoken in your voice and now they carry a  
melancholy ring to it. It's frightening, how watching you  
dissolve into memory the way you did has that sort of effect  
on my thoughts of you.  
  
I know now that I could never turn my back on you if I  
tried. I am well aware that it is far too late to make up  
for lost time.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
When we found Mulder, he had simply faded into dead light. A  
collapsed entity. The rich, lush growth of his mind  
withered. All that brilliance vanished into anti-matter. His  
gravity was greater than yours, greater than mine, and I  
knew that you understood this. Even now, I am amazed that  
his sheer power and didn't cause him to fall completely into  
himself and stay that way, to become a black hole, a  
permanent marker in space, where nothing and no-one could  
escape and all concept of time and space and principle would  
simply cease to exist. Or maybe it did, but somehow, some  
way... my control over my own gravity was enough to keep me  
from sinking. Knowing I was responsible for not only myself,  
but another, was somehow enough.  
  
I know you watched over me, then. Fearing the same thing as  
I, wondering if my light would twist and be swallowed into  
the vortex. I came close, I know, which is why it still  
astonishes me how you always remained nearby. Allowing me  
the comfort of washing my tears in the familiar sea. Letting  
me rest on the earth if I wandered up lost and confused and  
needing a place to cry. The gentle tug of your gravity just  
enough to keep me from toppling over the edge, taking the  
risk to remain with me even though the all-encompassing  
nature of the X-Files threatened to send you spinning down  
with me. We reached a balance then. Cautiously tilting on  
our axis, reaching an awkward equilibrium as respective  
memory hung like a cloud over our heads.  
  
But then... everything seemed to reverse. What had once  
imploded was exploding again. Dimensions seemed to alter.  
Parallel universes spun and twisted and beyond all  
scientific principle, beyond all religious notion, time  
somehow erased the permanent stain of death from Mulder's  
flesh. The sky turned blue again. Trees breathed life. I had  
allowed the land to support me, the ocean to comfort me, but  
in those trees I could reach new heights, in that sky I  
could fly.  
  
But *time* didn't reverse, didn't erase the past months of  
searching and fear and shattered hopes. You didn't exit the  
way you came, leaving no memory of your existence behind.  
You stayed even as I told you to leave, watched as Mulder  
came closer and old souls reconnected, and although you  
remained close by, reminding me that you were there, you  
were never as near to me as you had been in Mulder's  
absence. There were undercurrents that I sensed but could  
never quite identify. And somewhere along the line I  
realised that I had stopped holding you up in comparison to  
Mulder. His initial indifference, his coldness, stung me  
even as I understood, and one day I found myself looking up  
from my desk and comparing him to you.  
  
Maybe that was the result of gravity, plain and simple.  
Maybe not.  
  
You always looked at me as though I was the only light in  
the darkness. And I *was*... trapped within glass  
boundaries, the looking clearly into a world without, a  
globe shining subtly in a dark room. The intensity of the  
light gently muted by too much time, too much knowledge, too  
much truth. No flames, no fire -- nothing that could leap  
out and burn you unexpected -- only quiet light held inside  
reserve. I could see it reflected in your eyes, from when we  
began, all the way up until we ended. So many times I saw  
you looking at me as though you wanted to remember me, were  
trying to remember me, and not once did I ever feel the need  
to ask why. I should have asked. I should have tried to  
remember you too, not left it until those last timeless  
moments.  
  
The minute he returned and the universe was off-kilter  
again, any expectations I had for our friendship suddenly  
seemed illusory. Phantasmal. Your physicality remained, I  
thought you'd be another friend for life, another partner to  
watch my back in the field... not once, did I ever expect  
you to fade from my life and extinguish in a moment that  
should never have existed in time.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
My child is a tiny entity of light. Radiant, and powerful. A  
pulsar, a quasar, intense, happy light throbbing in time to  
the beating of my heart. That night, the night when stars  
fell and too many forces crashed into on another, I had held  
this amazing satellite protectively, close to my heart, and  
felt him sparkle at me.  
  
I had fallen back into Mulder and he fell into me, following  
all the laws and principles of force and yet breaking them  
all at the same time. Orbits spun and accelerated and yet  
the resultant felt far stronger, far deeper. The light  
seemed so intense, so pure. We stood wrapped within our own  
equilibrium, returning to our comfort zone, William held  
gently between us, forces on our part alternately  
strengthening and relenting with each gentle collision. This  
felt right. This felt like home.  
  
I admit that I truly believed in those seconds that we could  
be a happy family, as the fragile moment carved itself into  
memory.  
  
Yet I felt you, nearby. Your subtle power, slowly gaining  
momentum in the back of my mind. Solid earth with no-one to  
walk the lonely shores. A far-flung sea with more  
undercurrents than I dared to imagine. I felt light in my  
heart and happiness but somehow... the shadow of sadness  
that remained forever constant took on a form in my mind,  
and it was of your face. I walked over to the window to  
close the blinds, to conceal the brilliant light within from  
prying eyes, and glimpsed your truck parked on the side of  
the road, your now-familiar form stepping out. A  
coincidence, I told myself, and a coincidence only -- I  
couldn't be sensing another presence around me, not with  
Mulder standing by me, not with William gently pulling me  
in. But then you glanced up at the window and somehow,  
across all that distance, I still felt the shock of  
colliding with you...  
  
Mulder agreed to hold the baby while I went downstairs to  
greet you, gently leaning into my space again, leaving me  
with a final reminder of his presence. Both he and I knew  
that it wasn't William you wanted to see --you hadn't  
allowed us to entrust you with him when you came to visit us  
in the hospital. You had gazed at us all with a sort of  
pride mixed with concern, afraid for William, afraid for me,  
and it had been too easy for me to lean over into your space  
and offer you my child to hold. But your unexpected  
rebuffal, the swift rebuilding of defences... I chose at  
that moment to give you time, and although I even though I  
had stepped out of it to meet you at the doorstep I was  
still standing by that choice.  
  
We stood outside in the night simply staring each other  
down. The weight of your latent emotion could have knocked  
me over. The look in your eyes could have drowned me. I felt  
too conflicted, too anchored between their gravity and yours  
to want to take that chance.  
  
I came to see how you and William were going, you had said.  
Your eyes were open, unguarded, sad, maybe even a little  
proud. Memories of Luke exuded from you, a muted cloud. You  
looked past my shoulder to the door. Where --?  
  
He's inside, I replied. Your eyes had shadowed, but not out  
of concern. You knew. You wanted to flow away from me then,  
cool water slipping out through whatever cracks or crevasses  
you could immediately find. I wouldn't have been able to  
catch you if you tried, you would have left with an  
evaporating reminder of your existence. Oh, you had  
answered, and shifted uncomfortably. You looked down at your  
feet and nodded.  
  
Thank you for being there, I wanted to say. Thank you for  
watching our backs, thank you for the flowers, thank you for  
ducking out of the hospital room to give us some privacy,  
even if you did never return. I couldn't say those words, I  
could only look at you in silence.  
  
You were gazing at me. Searching my face as though some kind  
of repressed memory were hidden within. I know you didn't  
find it. I know you saw the light in my face. You saw the  
light from a miracle, a nebula, fresh and new starlight  
imprinted in my skin. You saw... I don't know how else you  
could have seen in me that night, but the way you stared at  
me... you were shining sadly in the darkness. I reached out  
for you, wanting to thank you, for protecting me, for being  
there above and beyond the call, and I think maybe after a  
while you understood, the mysterious reserve of resistance  
you had built around you beginning to dissolve. I heard your  
voice in my head, telling me it was never an option, filling  
in for me the blanks in the wordless expanse of your eyes. I  
think... I think it was me that touched you first, taking  
your hand in mine. Tracing the lines on your hand, wondering  
about the accuracy of palmistry, hoping that somewhere in  
those tangled hieroglyphics there would be a passing mention  
that I would still have a place in your future...  
  
Even now I have difficulty recalling exactly how the next  
moments came about. Maybe a breath of wind or the incoming  
tide knocked me into you and you caught me, steadied me.  
Maybe it was accidental or deliberate or somewhere in the  
distance two atoms collided and set off a chain reaction and  
threw us off balance, sent us spinning into one another.  
Maybe as the universe continued to spin into chaos, we  
searched for constants. Maybe it was the Pandora's Box of  
infinity being unlocked, sending a rush of repressed emotion  
into the cosmos. Maybe the downward force beginning at our  
respective centres propelled us, breaking past the barriers  
of magnetic resistance only to fall into a powerful magnetic  
attraction, we were that close. So much light... it was  
*you* that was luminescent, not me. Mulder had a light of  
his own, but it was shadowed with too much truth.  
  
Your face was in my hands, your arm around my waist, your  
hand grasping through my hair. I tasted finality and  
bitterness and desperation and unexpected, beautiful  
sweetness and I felt tainted, knowing where I had been less  
than ten minutes before. I felt as though I was a meteor  
falling from the sky where dead light had resided, soaring  
down to solid earth, to existence, to the irresistible pull  
of gravity. Willingly I dived from my plane of residence  
into yours, escaping the emptiness of the universe, reaching  
downwards past the magnetic pull that threatened to send me  
forever circling. I felt life and heat and warmth and  
passion and strength and I knew it was *you*... and then my  
eyes snapped open and harsh light flooded into peripheral  
vision and I was forced into orbit between planes again,  
hovering between the stratosphere and the rest of forever. I  
didn't want to let you go, I *couldn't*... I tried to stare  
past closed eyelids, needing to brave the storm within,  
feeling your heavy breathing, sensing the faint ripples  
along your spine. In every eternal day after I would ask why  
this had to happen, but in that moment, at that time... the  
question never once entered my thoughts. There were no  
consequences. No repercussions here. All of time vanished  
into extinction except for this one stolen second.  
  
And then you had simply opened your eyes and looked at me.  
You could never hide anything with those clear blue eyes,  
never conceal the secrets that lay within. Though your  
emotions were so clear, so obviously laid out for me to  
analyse, I knew I didn't have the answers I needed to unlock  
the cryptic message you were giving me. You could have  
pulled me back into yourself and trapped me there forever,  
so easily, with those mesmerizing eyes, allowed the tide to  
rise and fall and pull me downwards with the undertow,  
chained me to the earth with sheer force. But that wasn't  
your intention here, that wasn't your aim, and I've never  
known what was -- and when it came down to the choice of  
remaining in your arms or drawing away, I knew regretfully  
which was easier, which was safer. I felt recoil like a  
fired gun tug at my heart when I pulled myself away from  
you, something snapping deep within, pulling away from the  
force that radiated from you. I closed my eyes, felt myself  
revolving back into the rest of the universe again with  
barely any effort at all.  
  
I remember thinking bitterly, so this is how comets fly.  
  
So much confusion. Too much confusion in your eyes... I will  
never forget how you looked at me that last time. You leaned  
forward, brushed against my mouth, whispered something I've  
never had the courage to try and decipher. Oh, I remember  
how it feels, every imprint of your lips grazing against  
mine sinking deep into my flesh. A moving physical memory  
that still flutters across my skin on the darkest of nights.  
I know that what you said could be one of only two things.  
  
I love you.  
  
I'm sorry.  
  
Since that day, I've never once had the courage to know what  
you said with any certainty.  
  
I watched you walk away to your truck, knowing that maybe my  
hold on you was lessening, that your tide was washing away  
from me, and it could never give me a guarantee to return. I  
never realised until then I only barely had the strength to  
watch you walk away from me. It had been so easy for me to  
do the same, and I never knew, it never occurred to me... it  
was always me walking, running, flying away from you, and  
for the first time I was truly tasting the bitter truth of a  
role reversed. I *wanted* to summon you back to me. Not  
once had I imagined it would be you who would be the  
transient one. I knew the codeword, the name, that would  
make you stop in your tracks, that would make you turn  
around, and it lingered on my tongue, taunting me with the  
knowledge that I had never felt familiar enough with you to  
use it. It was left unsaid, and you continued on your way,  
so unexpectedly ephemeral. Not you. I saw the struggle in  
your eyes and I know why you left, but... I never seriously  
believed you ever would.  
  
When you walked away I found myself yearning for the sea.  
For the welcoming shores that lay beyond. For the feeling of  
anchoring myself into earth and strength and stone, not  
getting lost in shadow and the steady rain of falling  
leaves. I wanted to know more than this, I wanted to erase  
this forever from memory. I could live with anticipation,  
with latent tension, with forever wondering... I couldn't  
live with this.  
  
And yet the swift inevitability of reality was pulling me  
away, consequences rising from deep waters with empty eyes  
and fearsome hunger. I found myself desperately memorizing  
you as you drove away, every passing moment, every fragile  
second, and as time spun away from me I felt a different  
kind of gravity sinking onto my shoulders. Another orbit,  
another man, and I knew I was too weak to resist this time,  
too lost to try and exert my own control. I felt myself  
spinning, turning towards another planet, staring into  
confused, hurt eyes. Hazel eyes. The colour of redwood and  
leaves and unfathomable forests. Of dizzying heights and  
farther falls. I stared at him and tasted two truths on my  
tongue.  
  
That was when I remembered that incandescence still had the  
potential to burn those daring enough to want to reach out  
and touch it. Weight bore down on me, and I suddenly felt  
lost, not knowing if the force you still held on me was of  
my own imagination or that I could be foolish enough to hope  
you would linger, after this night. And even as I stared  
into Mulder's eyes and saw in them the expanse of infinity,  
I wondered if I would ever be afforded the chance to wander  
across your path again.  
  
~End~ 


End file.
